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Over 10 years down the line, it's safe to say that Richie Hawtin's 1996 Concept 1 series stands out as a body of work that perfectly represents the spirit of the time. 2007 would appear to be an optimal year in which to re-visit and to re-listen to these groundbreaking pieces, collected here together in a very limited CD double pack and especially remastered by Stefan Betke (aka Pole) from the Berlin based label Scape.

Marking a year long correlation between musical development and the progression of time, the original series consisted of 24 tracks spread over twelve monthly 12 inch singles and was strictly limited to 2000 copies per release. However, before the release of the Concept 1 96:CD in February 1998, Thomas Brinkmann made the trip from Germany to Windsor to play Hawtin some of his "Variations" of the series. The results were mind blowing - even by Hawtin's standards - opening up a space where emptiness and substance neatly overlapped to conjure up sounds that no one had ever heard
before.

It started back in Cologne where Brinkmann had employed the Concept 1 series as part of an experiment together with his own custom built turntable system (including a 30 kilo plate and 2 SME 309 tone arms utilizing both Ortofon and Van Den Hul moving-coil pick-ups). By playing Hawtin's original compositions on his two-arm turntable - slowing down the speed of the records and separating the left and right channels - Brinkmann identified previously unheard dynamics within the recordings and a melodic displacement between the channels. Even the imperfections of the vinyl pressing process added new character to his variations.

Essentially the Variations contain the same information as the original Concepts. Like the idea of cloning twins, Brinkmann has taken Richie's DNA and nurtured subtle mutations to create a strangely familiar but altogether
different set of grooves, allowing us to hear what he hears by enhancing something that was there but unheard until now in a triumph of sensibility over creativity.

RICHIE HAWTIN | CONCEPT 1 will be released on M_Nus Records on September 29.